Have a look at this article : It Management 5 Reasons Your Business Needs Augmented Reality…Today

Augmented reality is all the rage in the smartphone world, but is this something IT professionals should actually be planning for or yet another over-hyped science project? My bet is on the former.

With behemoths like Cisco believing augmented reality (AR) is the “future of shopping” and BMW considering it the “future of car repair,” your organization runs the risk of being left behind if you sit this trend out.

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If you haven’t started planning for AR, here are five reasons you should start – today:

1. You’re probably already using AR

Defining AR can be a bit tricky, with anyone wanting to capitalize on the trend calling their solution an AR one. We’ve seen this before with any number of tech trends, with terms like “cloud,” “mobile” and “social networking” slapped on anything and everything.

Often, this is marketing b.s. Sometimes, though, the adoption of terminology related to a hot trend signals an important shift. I’m going to go out on a limb and bet that this is the case with AR.

“One of the earliest uses of augmented reality that masses of people encountered was with NFL games,” said Mike Schaiman, Managing Partner and co-founder of Helios Interactive Technology, an AR and interactive display company. “The yellow line indicating the first-down marker is augmented reality.”

Schaiman defines AR as any intersection of the digital, or virtual, world with the real one. By defining AR this broadly, many previous technology trends, such as location-based services and gesture recognition, would be lumped in as AR.

I agree with the definition to a point, sort of like how australopithecus africanus can be defined as early humans, but, well, it’s not really accurate to call them “human.” Schaiman’s broad definition makes an argument, though. AR is here; it’s been around in some form or other for quite some time, and each time it evolves end users benefit.

Think of a wildly popular example, yet one not typically thought of as AR: the Wii. The Wii changed gaming and lured entirely new consumer segments into the gaming world.

One Response

Well, in my opinion augmented reality is just half the job. It allows to superimpose virtual and real world but you really operate only on the virtual one. The other half is controlling real objects from virtual world. Both halves generate what I call Total Reality. You can see some example in this article: http://lindipendente.splinder.com/post/23233891/total-reality